Boxing Day at Wetherby: a new chapter for Mr Incredible

Some folk will get a compendium of Su-doku puzzles for Christmas. Others will open their inboxes to the gift of Lumosity or Extreme Wordle. Sandy Thomson needs Santa to bring him neither. Not when he’s about to remove the gift tag and parcel tape from his very own enigma wrapped in a riddle. 

Mr Incredible may still be some way from reaching Mad Moose levels of recalcitrance. However, the classy chaser - who was runner-up in the Midlands National at Uttoxeter in March when carrying top weight - displayed significant ‘potential’ for his previous trainers, Henry de Bromhead and then Willie Mullins, to suggest such notoriety could still be attainable if his career goes the wrong way. 

The task of getting inside the head of the eight-year-old and trying to figure out what makes him tick now falls to Thomson, who brokered a deal with Mullins and owner Paul Byrne to bring him to deepest Berwickshire during the summer. He will now carry the colours of James Manclark and his wife Patricia, who hope Mr Incredible will help them to realise a lifelong ambition of owning a runner in the Grand National.

The long and winding road to Aintree starts on Boxing Day, when Mr Incredible is pencilled in to debut for his new connections in Wetherby’s William Hill Rowland Meyrick Handicap Chase, live on Racing TV. “That’s always been our plan,” says Thomson, before quickly adding, “although whether Mr Incredible is fully on board with it only time will tell! 

“He has his quirks, and he’s a huge challenge, for sure. But then we’ve had plenty of horses like that come to us before and we’ve always managed to get a tune out of them.”

Those horses include Neptune Equester and Harry The Viking, with whom Thomson plundered four consecutive Scottish Borders Nationals at his local track of Kelso. And Benson, who swooped fast and late under Ryan Mania to snatch last year’s Morebattle Hurdle from under the nose of Irish raider Colonel Mustard. 

Yet top spot on Thomson’s resume of renegades is reserved for Yorkhill, another ex-Mullins’ maverick who the Scot coaxed back from leftfield - quite literally, given the four-time Grade 1 winner’s increasingly erratic jumping to his left during a stark fall from grace - to land Newcastle’s Rehearsal Chase in 2020 as the 66-1 rank outsider of the field.

While some of his contemporaries might baulk at the prospect of working with such tricky types, Thomson openly embraces it.

He said: “Harry The Viking almost went up our gallop backwards when we first got him from Paul Nicholls. He really was that slow. But we got him going better with horses around him and, bit by bit, managed to sweeten him up. 

“When he won his second Borders National in 2018, three weeks shy of his 14th birthday, he’d have run through a brick wall for you. Calett Mad was seven years his junior but there was no way the old boy was letting him past him up the run-in that day.

“Yorkhill was a bit different. To be fair to him, he wasn’t really a problem, although I felt he was starting to get a big 'doggy' before he won the Rehearsal on his second run for us. 

“Ryan gave him an absolute peach that day. Whether we’d have got another performance like that out of Yorkhill post-Newcastle, I’m not so sure. Unfortunately he got an injury not long afterwards and didn’t run again, so we never got to find out.

“Horses like that have their challenges, but that’s the market we operate in. If they didn’t have their quirks, we wouldn’t be able to afford them.”

Which is how Thomson came to acquire his latest psychology project. He added: “James asked me about three years ago if I’d find him a horse for the National, but initially nothing came up at the right price. We also looked at buying Chemical Energy out of the Caldwell dispersal sale but he, too, proved beyond our budget. 

“During the summer I compiled a list of potential horses and that’s when Mr Incredible came up as an option. I know Willie, so I phoned him to ask if Paul Byrne might be willing to sell. Having sold Noble Yeats just before he won the National in 2022, I wasn’t sure if he’d be open to letting another Grand National winner slip through his hands! But Willie spoke to Paul and said he would be, and thankfully we were able to agree a deal.”

Mr Incredible unseated his rider Brian Hayes in two previous attempts at the National. If nothing else, at least he consented to jump off on both of those occasions. He’d completely refused to play ball when fitted with first-time cheekpieces in a Grade 1 at Leopardstown three years ago on his final run for De Bromhead; then took an age to get going before promptly pulling himself up before the first fence of April’s Scottish Grand National on his penultimate start for Mullins.

Yet Thomson feels his newest recruit has been unfairly maligned in some quarters. He said: “You can’t pin any blame on Mr Incredible for either of his unseats in the National. In fact, he was desperately unlucky on both occasions. Two years ago, Brian Hayes lost his irons and ended up getting bumped out of the saddle. Then this year Mahler Mission jumped right across him at The Chair and left him with nowhere to go. 

“He’s still only eight, rising nine, so he’s got another two or maybe even three Nationals in him if we can get him to where we want him. He showed what a talented horse he is with that run to be second in the Midlands National off top weight. That was a massive performance on soft ground with 12st on his back, especially as he hadn’t run since the previous year’s National. So we know what he’s capable of when he’s on it.”

Getting him in the right headspace will be the key to that. Which is why Thomson and Mania have applied plenty of the kid-glove treatment to his training thus far. Thomson, a Scotland B rugby international in his youth, said: “If Mr Incredible decides he’s not going to do something on any given day, he won’t do it. There’s no budging him and there’s no point even trying to get him to budge.

“We’re getting to know his foibles now, his likes and dislikes. We take our lead from him, try to do what he likes and avoid what he doesn’t, and humour him along. That’s the key to all those horses.

“When we first began to increase his training load, Ryan would take him up into the hills around here and just ride him about. It’s a great way to get some good work into him without him even realising it! He’s also been out for a day or two hunting with Ryan. I’ve even ridden him myself occasionally, just to mix things up a bit.

“He’s a huge challenge, and some days go better than others. But it’s a challenge Ryan and I are thoroughly enjoying - although perhaps me a little bit more than him!”